Any faithful reader of my posts probably knows what my first thought of Arlen Specter, and it's not a partisan GOP rant. The final step in my own political odyssey from liberalism to conservatism was the unconscionable rejection of the most qualified Supreme Court justice nominee in my lifetime, Robert Bork. And one of the ringleaders of this pathetic politically-motivated charade was the prominent Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter. The fact that he once again proudly touted his role over last week's Sunday morning news broadcasts in derailing Reagan's nomination of the distinguished, honorable jurist did not help my appraisal of his politically expedient move to bypass an almost certain upcoming primary loss to conservative Congressman Toomey.
However, despite my deep reservations over Specter's role in the Bork defeat and his recent move allowing Democrats to bypass legitimate bipartisan compromises over overspending in the so-called stimulus bill, I'm empathetic to his point of view that the current system seems to be rigged in favor of nominating more ideological (versus pragmatic) candidates whom do not appeal to independent and other voters and can't be elected. (However, given a recent statewide poll pitting Specter against Toomey, Specter is only leading by a few percentage points, which is not good news for a multi-term incumbent and suggests that Toomey may not be perceived as ideological as Specter suggests.) I do not believe in a political party shooting itself in the foot by nominating unelectable candidates.
In terms of traitor charges being lodged against Specter, I am not really that surprised given the fact of Specter's politically expedient conversion to the GOP in 1965 in Philadelphia on the way to becoming attorney general. I recall the fable of the Indian boy whom carried a rattlesnake which had promised not to bite him but did at the end, and in response to the dying boy's complaint over the snake's violating his promise, the rattlesnake responded that the boy knew exactly what he was when the boy picked him up; that is, the Republicans have no reason to be surprised because Specter's sole motive is his own political survival. As to the Senate Democrats' decision not to recognize Specter's years as a GOP senator in their seniority system, Arlen, you know about what kind of snakes the Senate Democrats were when you decided to sleep with them; cry me a river, junior senator.
Obama's Search for a Souter Replacement to the Supreme Court
If you ask of areas where George W. Bush outdid his dad as Presidence (besides winning reelection), one obvious comparison would be his nominations of John Roberts and Sam Alito versus the picks of David Souter and Clarence Thomas. (Let's forget that embarrassing nomination of a clearly underqualified Harriet Miers.) Souter's nomination was an unforced error, with somehow nobody in the loop realizing that Souter had served on the board of a hospital that provided abortion services. Nevertheless, Souter, who had espoused conservative-leaning positions of originalism and strict constructionism in Senate and had a New Hampshire judicial reputation for upholding tough sentencing, initially leaned towards conservative side of the Court during his first two years, even upholding some minor abortion restrictions, but after Clarence Thomas was confirmed, decidedly drifted leftward, eventually becoming a consistently liberal justice, even rejecting abortion restrictions he originally upheld. The fact that Souter dissented in Bush v Gore (not the Equal Protection violation, on which he concurred) and considered resigning but waited out the Bush presidency to do so does not surprise me.
Obama once again engages in indirect, ambiguous, misleading rhetoric (oh, God, how I long for McCain's trademark straight talk) in describing his criteria for selecting Souter's replacement:
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.
No doubt in Obama's distorted view of reality, conservative justices belong to the Marie Antoinette "let-them-eat-cake" wing of the Supreme Court! Obama is so arrogantly and presumptuously elitist and judgmental of conservatives, whom, according to Arthur C. Brooks' research, actually give a larger portion of their income to charity. Tell me, Barack, how empathetic were you in buying that $1.6M mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood and doing your grocery shopping for pricey arugula at Whole Foods?
I wonder one day when others ask you for a Christmas donation, you will say, "Are there no tax credits? Are there no homeless shelters?...I help passed into law the establishments I have mentioned." "Many want to make it on their own, but have trouble supporting their families because you eliminated tax deductions for charitable institutions." "Have I not done my part by nominating justices whom give you the option of limiting your families once you find yourselves pregnant?"
Let me translate Obama code: "Empathy" is a code word for a couple of related concepts: positive rights and positive liberty. Negative rights involve freedom from others restricting one's ability to do something: for example, you can't keep me from practicing my religious faith, you can't stop me from expressing my opinion, and you can't prohibit my obtaining a means to protect my family. Positive rights require action; for example, the government must provide me with a lawyer if I'm charged with a crime and I don't have resources to hire a lawyer, the government must provide my child with a free education through high school, and the government must guarantee that in the event of a medical emergency, I won't be turned away from a nearby hospital because of an inability to pay.
Negative liberty is freedom from restraint. For example, if I market private health insurance, I should be able to offer policies across state lines without having to navigate through a Byzantine system of idiosyncratic goldplated state mandates. If a leading competitor offers me a fair market price for my business, I should be allowed to sell. Positive liberty focuses on having the sufficient and necessary resources to fully participate in our society, arguing without a certain minimal threshold, unalienable rights such as Jefferson's notion of the pursuit of happiness are abstract and meaningless. For instance, if children are showing up to public school hungry, and they clearly can't perform well on an empty stomach, we should provide them with something to eat. A wealthy parent may have the resources to send his or her child to Stanford, but college-age young people from lower middle-class families without access to sufficient financial aid may have no alternative but a bleak future in lower-paying jobs not requiring a college degree.
Generally speaking, American conservatives focus on negative rights and liberties and liberals or "progressives" like Barack Obama focus on government funding or regulations relevant to positive rights and liberties (e.g., a "living wage", pension funding, and free education or health care). Going back to Obama's quote above, what he is saying is consistent with an infamous 2001 WBEZ radio interview (discussed in one or more of my posts during the campaign) that while he was "not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change by the courts" although he "craft theoretical justifications" for "legally . . . bringing about economic legal change through the courts." The "empathy" to which Obama is referring is someone whom, like the activist jurists in Roe v Wade whom found the legal right to abort one's child in the Constitution, can devise a theoretical foundation of major redistributive change.
We conservatives, like Isaiah Berlin, believe that positive liberty is theoretical window-dressing for self-superior, abusive paternalism, which is self-defeating, not only inhibiting economic growth but raising moral hazards by unconscionably nurturing dependence on the government, rather than raising yourself by your own bootstraps (along with undermining other traditional American values).
We believe that the country is best served by the nomination of a well-qualified judicial candidate without a hidden policy agenda, whom respects the separation of powers and refuses to allow a liberal President or Congress to use the courts as a backdoor approach to implementing a political agenda.
Obama Plays Mr. Green Eyeshades
Well, I've already mentioned in a past post big cuts that Obama has announced with respect to Defense Department research and development projects. In yesterday's Washington Post, Spencer Hsu reported that Obama "would eliminate new funding for advanced-generation equipment to detect nuclear weapons and radiological materials at U.S. borders and ports and around New York City in his 2010 budget." Let me briefly remind the reader that earlier during the Bush Administration, Congressional Democrats constantly harped on the vulnerability of American ports. To be sure, the Obama Administration made the predictable justifications of project cost overruns and technical flaws but the net effect is to kill the program. Let me also remind the reader of Reagan's "Star Wars" program, which liberals predictably derided as an unworkable boondoggle but which ultimately contributed to an implosion of the Soviet empire. The Obama Administration, by cutting bone from the military and homeland security budgets, is placing the national security of the United States at risk, something we cannot afford to do as nuclear arms and long-range missile technology races in the Middle East and eastern Asia start to break out, making this a more dangerous world.
According to Lori Montgomery and Amy Goldstein in today's Washington Post, more than half of Obama's $17B in budget cuts (0.5% of the Obama budget), $8.8B, come from cuts in some 14 Defense Department programs. And one could only imagine what the partisan response of the Democrats would have been if the Republicans, rather than Obama, had called Even Start, an early childhood education program, "ineffective". Democrat Hinchey vows that he will protect the 800 jobs in his district depending on the production of a Presidential helicopter, forcing on Obama something he says he doesn't want or need... And is it unexpected that the federal government would cut subsidies paid to private lenders to service college loans, so the government can unfairly compete in the market segment? Have we learned nothing from the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle?
